What does it really cost you to win a customer?
Calculate your true cost of sale, customer acquisition cost and gross margin — then see your spend broken down by category with practical ways to bring it down.
Takes ~3 minutes · All figures stay in your browser until you choose to share them
Acquisition Cost
What each customer costs
Cost Breakdown
Where the money goes
Indicative Context
Rough industry reference
Recommendations
Where to optimise
About this tool
this tool
Most owners know what a customer is worth, but far fewer know what one actually costs to win. The true cost of sale is scattered across the business — marketing agencies and ad spend, content, events and outsourced lead generation, plus sales salaries, commissions, CRM tools, training and travel. Because these sit in different budgets and different people's heads, they rarely get added up and compared against the revenue they produce. The result is that acquisition cost creeps, margin quietly erodes, and there's no clear view of which part of the spend is doing the work. This calculator pulls the whole picture together so you can see, in one place, what it really costs you to turn a lead into a paying customer.
How it works
You enter your annual figures — revenue, customers won, and optionally leads and proposals — then your marketing costs (spend, advertising, content, events, lead generation) and sales costs (salaries, commissions, CRM and tools, training, travel). From your own numbers it totals your cost of sale and works out your customer acquisition cost, cost per lead and cost per proposal, your average deal size, your cost of sale as a percentage of revenue, and the gross margin left after that spend. It also maps your funnel — lead-to-proposal and proposal-to-close conversion — and breaks your total spend down by category so you can see where the money actually goes. To give context, it places your headline metrics against rough, order-of-magnitude reference points for the industry you select; these are deliberately labelled indicative estimates for a sense-check, not published averages or survey benchmarks. Finally it surfaces plain-English recommendations flagging where your spend or conversion looks out of balance.
Who it’s for
Australian SME owners, founders and finance leads who want a clear, honest read on what it costs to win a customer and where that spend can be tightened.
- Your true cost of sale spans both marketing and sales — agency and ad spend, content, events and lead gen, plus salaries, commissions, tools, training and travel — and only adds up to something useful once it's totalled against the revenue it produces.
- Acquisition cost, cost of sale as a share of revenue, and gross margin after sales spend are the numbers that tell you whether growth is profitable; the calculator derives all three from figures you already have.
- Breaking spend down by category and mapping your lead-to-proposal-to-close funnel usually shows that the fastest margin win is lifting conversion, not spending more on leads.
Frequently asked questions
What's the difference between cost of sale and cost of goods sold?
Cost of goods sold (COGS) is what it costs to deliver the product or service you sold — materials, direct labour, delivery. Cost of sale, as this tool uses it, is what it costs to win the customer in the first place: your combined marketing and sales investment. This calculator focuses on that acquisition side, so its gross margin figure is the margin left after sales and marketing spend, which is why you should read it alongside your delivery costs rather than as a full profit figure.
What should I include in my sales and marketing costs?
Include everything you spend to generate demand and close deals over a year. On the marketing side that's agency or strategy fees, advertising across all channels, content creation, events and sponsorships, and any outsourced lead generation. On the sales side it's the total compensation for sales roles, commissions and bonuses, your CRM and sales tools, sales training, and travel and entertainment tied to winning business. Leave out delivery costs and general overheads. The more completely you capture these, the more honest your acquisition cost and margin will be.
How should I treat the industry comparison figures?
As a rough sense-check only. The reference points shown for each industry are indicative, order-of-magnitude estimates included to give your numbers some context — they are not published averages, survey medians or a target to hit. Your own business model, deal size and sales motion matter far more than any generic figure, so use the comparison to ask better questions about your spend rather than to judge yourself against a benchmark.
Related reading